Quick note: I am legit looking to read people's thoughts on this, and would appreciate any time someone takes to share despite the length of post
A family member of mine is in the unenviable position of trying to break into the underpaid, oversubscribed, passion-driven world of translation and localisation in East Asian media, and has been worried about the idea that what she's trying to do might be viewed as undermining a strike that is all about writers' agency and ownership of their work.
I am extremely unqualified to help navigate this - I'm not from a union family, area, or industry, and views on such things can be hugely regional. My instinct is that's she's in the clear:
- It's a US-based strike, and she's based in, and would work for companies in, East Asia.
- Translation is a very different discipline, with separate unions and organisation which hasn't (to the best of my limited research) gotten involved even in the same market the strikes are affecting
But over time she's come to some honestly very reasonable concerns that I'm just not qualified to confirm/assuage, namely;
- Sure, the companies are in Asia, but a lot of the work they're doing is outsourced by US companies that most certainly are involved.
- While translation is separate, it's definitely related, and localisation often involved close reading of the original work or communication with the writers - actively bypassing that could be seen as undermining them.
- Maybe the translators unions in the US just suck???
Anyway, as I said I'm not qualified for the fine details here - it still seems fine to me, but I know the concept of scabbing can be applied very liberally in some places, so I really can't be confident.
Thoughts/advice from people in the know would be hugely appreciated! She's been struggling to get a foothold in the industry for a while and would really hate to get her start through inadvertantly scabbing (we're all very proud of her).